Numberland

  Chapter 1: Week 21, Day 1

  Every once in a while, Wilson would walk into a room and then immediately forget what he came in for. He wasn’t alone. Many people have this experience every day. It’s one of those universal human frustrations, like stubbing your toe.

  One day Wilson found himself walking in the woods, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t remember what he was doing there. He was overcome with that same sense of disconnection, that feeling that his brain had skipped a step.

  But this time he wasn’t standing in the kitchen with a dumb look on his face. He was standing on a narrow cobblestone road just wide enough for one person to walk on. It stretched forward and back between evergreen trees that pressed their needles in so close he felt like he was standing in a hallway. He could only see a few feet in front and behind him before the natural curve of the road and the foliage on either side blocked his view.

  It was a chilly morning. A thin fog hung in the air. The sun was just beginning to rise.

  Wilson stood in place mentally spinning his wheels, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t remember why he was here. He didn’t even know where ‘here’ was. He couldn’t even imagine a reason to be on an ancient cobblestone footpath in the middle of the woods. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been up this early. He didn’t even like hiking.

  He genuinely had no clue.

  What Wilson would normally do in this sort of situation (that is, the situation of standing in the kitchen with a dumb look on his face trying to remember what he’d come in for) was to carry on with his day and hope the reason eventually came back to him.

  He decided that was exactly what he should do. The situation was slightly different, but the logic was the same. He must have had a reason to come this way in the first place, so the only thing to do was to keep walking and hope it eventually came back to him. Anyway, he couldn’t just stand around and do nothing.

  ‘Maybe my car ran out of gas and I’m walking to the gas station,’ he thought. ‘The gas station that’s in the middle of a spooky forest, just down this old cobblestone footpath that’s way too narrow for a car.’

  The only other option was to go back the way he’d come, but if he did that then he’d just have to turn around again when he did eventually remember where he was going.

  He walked down the road. The sun rose a little over the horizon. The trees in the east cast dark shadows over the path.

  Eventually he came to a break in the trees. Before him, a stone bridge went over a little canal. He called it a canal and not a river because it was obviously man-made, with retaining walls made of the same stone as the path. To the left and right the canal stretched into the distance, curved slightly concave away from him. It was narrow enough that Wilson could have jumped across it, although he walked across the bridge instead.

  On the other side of the bridge the trees were different. Instead of being bushy pines that clustered densely together and filled the gaps between them with needles, these were tall and skinny. Their canopies fought for space overhead, but the forest floor was relatively clear.

  “Huh,” he said aloud.

  He thought, ‘Two monocultures of trees, separated by an obviously artificial gap. Am I in a tree farm? It would make sense if the canal was for irrigation, but why is it so bespoke? I know there are a lot of old stone structures in Europe, but unless I forgot crossing an ocean I’m on the wrong continent for that. And this looks too twee to be colonial-era New World architecture. Am I in a theme park?’

  “Where the heck am I?” Wilson asked the empty air, mostly just to hear his own voice.

  He kept going. It wasn’t like he could do anything else.

  The forest was thinner on the other side of the bridge, so Wilson could see much further in front of him. After walking for just a few minutes he spotted something between the trees. It was hard to say what it was, exactly, but he could see a great big brown lump about the size of a barn. It looked like a pile of sticks and mud, but it was tough to say peering at it from a distance between trunks and foliage.

  Maybe it was a building. If he was lucky, there might be people there he could ask for directions.

  He jogged down the path. It didn’t go straight towards the thing, or straight anywhere for that matter, but instead twisted and curved in whimsical ways. A few times, Wilson found places where he could avoid a loop or a U-turn just by cutting across a stretch of forest.

  Eventually he came to a square plaza. The road connected to one of the corners of the square, and three other roads connected to the other three corners. In the middle of the square there was a statue on a pedestal. There was a plaque on the pedestal, and a sheet of paper stuck to the statue’s feet just above.

  The big brown thing was right up against the edge of the plaza. On closer inspection it really was a big pile of sticks and mud, or maybe it was just artistically styled to look like that. It was a huge blocky pile of branches and dried mud piled up to the height of a 2-storey building, with nearly vertical outer walls that made it look like a hut or log cabin. It could have been a beaver dam, except that there was no water anywhere and its walls were far too steep.

  Despite the lack of an obvious door, Wilson’s first thought was that he must really be in a theme park and this must be a themed building designed to look like a beaver dam or a caveman’s hut or something along those lines. The structure was right up against the edge of the plaza, very much like a building would be.

  Wilson went straight for the plaque, not even glancing at the statue. He was carrying an almost desperate hope in his heart that the inscription would be a hint about where he was. A name. A date. A dedication. Anything.

  It was not to be. The plaque read, “Princess Alison Arrives in Numberland,” probably just the name of the sculpture. There wasn’t even a date. No useful information.

  Disappointed, he glanced up at the statue. It portrayed an ordinary-looking woman in mid-stride, not very princess-like at all. She wore jeans and a t-shirt, and she seemed every bit as dazed and confused as he felt right then.

  There was also the sheet of paper that was stuck to the statue’s feet. It had writing on it. It said:

  “If you’re reading this, exit the plaza via the road to your left and follow it until you reach a door. Go through the door and up the stairs to reach the village.”

  ‘Huh,’ he thought. ‘I must not be the first person to get lost here. This note is phrased so oddly, though. It tells me to walk until I reach a door, but you’d think it would be until I reach a building with a door. And then there’s a village upstairs inside a building?’

  He would check it out, but first he wanted to check out the big brown thing. The way it was positioned right along the edge of the plaza, it seemed like it should have been a building. It was big and blocky enough to be a themed building with a facade designed to look like a pile of mud and sticks. For that matter, it seemed way too big to be made of just mud and sticks and stay standing.

  And if it was a building, there might be people inside. If there were people inside, he could ask them for directions.

  He walked up to it and touched it gingerly. The mud was real mud, and the sticks were real sticks, it wasn’t just painted plaster. How it stayed up was a mystery. The biggest beaver dams could get this big, but they didn’t have sheer walls. They were more like hills, gently sloped on all sides. This was a building. It must have been built around a core made of sturdier materials.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  There was no sign of a door, but there were irregularly spaced circular tunnels about a meter wide each, leading deeper into the structure. They were too small for a human to pass through easily.

  Wilson thought, ‘Maybe this really is the den of a wild animal, like some kind of land-dwelling beaver.’

  He backed away, but as he did a small furry head poked out of one of the tunnels. Bigger than a housecat but smaller than a dog, it had long ears like a rabbit and buck teeth like a beaver. Its eyes were narrowed in something that looked like pure hatred, if you could even read expressions on a rodent’s face.

  The instant it laid eyes on him, it let out a shrill squeal and pounced at him. It was fast, and he didn’t even have time to turn around before it was on him. He tried to kick it away, but the creature seemed to have no concept of fear. It latched on to his ankle with its buck teeth.

  “Ouch! Damn it!” Wilson yelled, more out of shock than pain. Its bite hurt, but not as much as he would have expected. The little monster’s teeth were too blunt to cut through his jeans.

  He shook his leg to try to dislodge it, but the rabbit creature refused to let go. He stumbled back and fell to the ground. Rather than get back up, he took advantage of the fact that he was sitting to kick with his other foot. Even being kicked in the head didn’t make the thing let go, but he kept kicking. The fifth kick dislodged the thing and sent it flying.

  Just then, another rabbit creature crept out of one of the tunnels, followed quickly by a third. When they saw Wilson they flattened their ears and growled.

  Wilson sprang to his feet and sprinted away as fast as he could, not caring which direction he was going. He remembered the note telling him to go left, but it would have to be his left when he had been facing the note, and he didn’t have time to stop and work out which way that was with the rabbit-creatures hot on his heels. He ran out of the plaza by the first path he came across.

  The path led up a hill then down again. It led across another bridge, around a bend where the road curved to avoid a thicket, through a tunnel and out the other side. The rabbits followed him all the way, trying and mostly failing to snag his ankles with their teeth, apparently not caring when their faces got kicked in the process. He would have assumed they were timid herbivores just to look at them, so he couldn’t guess why they were being so persistent.

  Wilson started to worry that he might have no choice but to turn and fight. He had never fought anyone or anything in his life. He didn’t like any part of the idea of kicking rabbits, beavers, dogs, or whatever these things were, even if they were being aggressive. But he also knew he couldn’t keep running forever.

  Just then, he realized that there was a wall in front of him. It had been there the whole time, he just hadn’t recognized it.

  The thing he had assumed was the sky was actually a huge blue wall. It had clouds on it, but now that he was closer he could see that they were unmistakably just painted on. The wall stretched up as high as he could see. He couldn’t see a point where it ended and the real sky began.

  Maybe it didn’t end. Maybe he was inside a ridiculously huge building, and the blue wall connected to a blue ceiling.

  He didn’t have time to think about it. All at once he broke out of the trees and saw that the wall was right in front of him, a hundred meters away at most. The path led right up to the wall, and at the point they met there was a door.

  Wilson broke into a dead sprint. It didn’t matter where he was or why, that door was exactly what he needed right now. All he had to do was get through and close it behind him. The rabbits would be trapped on this side, and he’d have plenty of time to catch his breath and think.

  He didn’t have space to slow down, so he stopped himself by slamming into the wall next to the door instead, ignoring the pain. The rabbits were even more reckless, and one of them slammed head first into the door.

  The door was painted the same shade of blue as the wall. The only part that stood out was the silver handle. Wilson grabbed it and pulled. It was unlocked. Relief washed over him.

  He had to get through, but he also needed to stop the rabbits from following him. This, ironically, was something he had experience with. Who hadn’t needed to get out through a door while keeping a cat or dog from following, at some point in their life? He turned around backwards as he opened the door and blocked it with his body. One of the rabbits took the opportunity to latch on to his leg.

  “Leave. Me. Alone!” he said, standing on one foot and using the other to kick the rabbit. It remained stubbornly attached to his leg. He stepped backwards through the door, trying to close it on the rabbit’s head, hoping it would let go and get stuck on the other side-

  -and his foot touched empty air.

  He’d walked backwards through the door, so he hadn’t seen that there was nothing on the other side to stand on. He fell, the rabbit’s jaws still latched on to his leg.

  Then everything happened too fast to process. He landed butt-first on something hard, bruising his tailbone. That hard something was also steeply sloped and covered with water, and he found his fall turning into a downward slide. He spun around and banged his head twice, still sliding. Finally, he plunged into deep water.

  Wilson’s instincts kicked in and he swam to the surface.

  He found himself in a swimming pool in the shadow of a huge water slide. It was a tightly coiled spiral of yellow plastic supported by steel beams, two storeys tall. A geyser of water poured out of the bottom of the slide and into the pool. At the top of the slide was the door he’d come through. It was hanging slightly open, twenty feet above Wilson’s head, swinging over open air.

  He’d fallen down a water slide. Who in their right mind would put a door directly over a water slide, just to trick people into falling in? That had to be illegal.

  The other side of the wall had been painted sky blue, but on this side it was decorated in a checkerboard pattern of pale yellow and aqua that reminded Wilson of the wall of a public swimming pool he’d been to as a kid.

  He started to swim for the nearest edge of the swimming pool. Just then, the rabbit burst out of the water. It had been knocked away at some point in his trip down the water slide, but now it had found him again. It lunged for his face, jaws chomping on empty air. He shoved it back and they both plunged back underwater.

  They struggled together. The rabbit was small and a weak swimmer, but it seemed to care more about hurting him than it did about keeping its head above water. For a terrible minute it seemed like it would succeed in taking them both down together.

  Then Wilson’s foot touched solid ground. Their fight had drifted to a shallower part of the pool and now he could reach the bottom with the tips of his toes. He could feel that the bottom of the pool was sloped, and he frantically splashed and hopped uphill until he could stand with his head above the water.

  Now that he was standing instead of paddling, he had leverage. He grabbed the rabbit and forced it under the water. It bit into his sleeve with its blunt teeth, but he didn’t relent. He held it down until it stopped struggling.

  “You want a fight that badly, you little monster? Fine.” he said, still spitting water. “Why didn’t you just leave me alone?”

  He wasn’t sure how long it took a rabbit to drown, and he wasn’t even sure if it was a rabbit, so he held it down even after it stopped moving just to be safe.

  Suddenly, there was a loud pop like the bursting of a balloon, and the rabbit seemed to burst open in his hands. He reflexively let go, and as he did a cloud of smoke burst out of the water all around him. He sputtered and stumbled his way free of the cloud, walking uphill through the water towards the shallow end of the pool.

  When he was out of the water, he stood by the edge of the pool and took a good look around him for the first time since falling through the door.

  He was not outdoors, as he had first assumed. He was inside a building. There was a ceiling. In the other room it had been painted sky-blue, but here it was the same yellow and aqua checkerboard pattern as the wall, clearly artificial.

  The roof was unbelievably high. He got vertigo just looking at it. Looking up the wall, the yellow and aqua squares dwindled until they became too tiny to make out, and that was less than halfway up. Wilson didn’t have the frame of reference to even guess how high it was, but it seemed like kilometers. It didn’t seem physically possible for it to stay up. It should have collapsed under its own weight.

  In front of him was the water slide. It was huge, as big as a house and more than two storeys tall. It seemed tiny in comparison to the vast empty space above, under that cavernous and distant ceiling, but it was still more than he thought he could reasonably climb. He doubted he was going to be able to go back the way he’d come.

  To the left and right, the wall seemed to extend for miles. It was perfectly straight, and in the distance, he could see that it turned back at a right angle. He got the impression that he was in a square or rectangular room blown up to absurd size. Considering the height of the ceiling it might even have been a cube, as absurd as that was.

  It wasn’t empty. In every direction there were water features. Pools, slides, fountains, wave pools, lazy rivers, and other things Wilson couldn’t identify were scattered haphazardly through the space, with no apparent rhyme or reason. They all connected to each other, slides leading to pools flowing into rivers and so on, so much that it seemed like you could get around more easily in a boat than by walking. No attempt had been made to line them up or leave space for natural walkways, so it would be impossible to get anywhere without passing through or over water.

  Most of the features were clustered on the ground level, but some were elevated. There were occasional plateaus and elevated pools, many of which poured out through slides into ground-level pools. In the distance, he could make out a few towers made up of multiple levels of swimming pools pouring into slides into pools into slides.

  It was a water park, maybe the most elaborate water park ever built. But there was no one in it. As far as the eye could see, Wilson was completely alone.